


Hunter

by DannyBarefoot



Category: Shadowrun
Genre: Arson, Bullying, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Neglect, Crimes & Criminals, Cyberpunk, Drugs, Elves, Evil Corporations, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Gangs, Hacking, Martial Arts, Masturbation, Original Character(s), Porn Watching, School, Science Fiction, Sex in a Car, Street fighting, Suicide, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Training, Urban Fantasy, Vaginal Fingering, Yakuza
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27165805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DannyBarefoot/pseuds/DannyBarefoot
Summary: The birth of a shadowrunner. A world of darkness, from corporate compounds to mean streets, and Yuu Kamishiro is there.Based on the manga Holyland by Kouji Mori, inspired by prompts from mithryl-draws on Tumblr. Chpt 3 partly inspired by side quests in Dead Man's Switch and Mercurial PC modules.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 4





	1. Corporate Labyrinths - Death

There were relatively few elves born in Japan, for no discernible reason, but the reason not so many of them went to Yomi Island was rather less mysterious. Kamishiro-san had been sent to Renraku’s Seattle branch instead, PR department. A masterstroke of policy which saved Renraku’s public face with its Japanese allies, while demonstrating to investors of the forty-eighth prefecture its sterling commitment to diversity. Inclusion of _talented_ metahumans was simply good business, and Kamishiro-san could have been Director of PR, for _Seattle_ , if he’d only consented to getting some fat implanted and his ears snipped. And hadn’t done in Seattle what in Japan would have brought the _Kenpeitai_ down on him like the judgement of Heaven; marrying a human woman and raising an elf child.

A Japanese _half-elf_ , if that were possible, a defiling _mixture_ , would have been far worse. Worse than a _Gaijin_ ; many thousands of them served Renraku with dedication and did as much to raise their children for service as the company schools and nurseries. Worse than a plainly alien _Gaijin_ elf–several had been promoted over Kamishiro’s head–even worse, in short, than what little Yuu Kamishiro was. A full elf with the temerity to don raven hair and almond eyes.

When asked what his son was, Kamishiro-san only stated with all persuasion that an elf could bring to bear; the boy was for Renraku. No metahuman could bear a Japanese national SIN. His SIN was from Renraku; his citizenship and existence, the saving shelter of his life. His life for the Renraku Computer Systems Corporation, and the same for his boy, Renraku’s son.

Notwithstanding, Yuu Kamishiro received the idea that he was different from Renraku’s other children, very early. Different from the fair or dark-skinned toddlers, with their corner of the company daycare centre, different from the Japanese boys and girls in their corner who looked something like him. The girls honestly looked more like him, slim and thick-haired, but whenever he went near them the carer would pull him away and smack him. The boys either ignored him or pushed him over, especially when they’d discovered he lacked any desire at all to shove them back.

In preschool, the class bowed in unison each morning to the hologram of the Emperor. Every evening, to the smiling hologram of Inezo Aneki, esteemed father of Renraku. The teacher timed sixty seconds, and anyone who sniggered got the cane. They learnt basic computer science and national history. Yuu told another boy he felt proud to be Japanese. The boy broke his nose; the teachers and parents praised him for it.

Yuu’s father gave him the talk about being Renraku, not Japanese. Yuu duly went on to say how proud he was of belonging to the global Renraku family, how great all-wise and all-providing Renraku was (in the words of the corporate anthem, as well as its many approved rock, J-pop and glitch punk derivatives), to anyone who would stand still to hear. The teachers found less fault with him; if the other boys called him a bootlicking creep, wasn’t that better than whispers about dirty dandelion eaters? It was, until a child who would later become the youngest Renraku executive in Seattle reprogrammed a drone to spray red paint all over Yuu, dedicating his entire body to Renraku in a visible manner. With no real consequences for this prank, since the company clinic managed to save both Yuu’s eyes, the children quickly learned that they could hit the daisy eater whenever they got fed up with him, or indeed with anything else.

By junior high, Yuu had got the idea that the less he stood out, the better. He couldn’t disappear like the other bully magnets with pimples or specs, with his idol singer cheeks, cropped but still raven-bright hair and big, sorry brown eyes. He could hide any sign of sadness, however, which would be called defiance–especially from his parents–and smile blandly however miserable he felt. He could get away with the occasional beating if he kept quiet, and there was no time for getting his face shoved in the toilet unnecessarily anyway; he had exams to revise for. His father, the only one who could ever truly be on his side, would not like it if he failed.

Hours plugged into the matrix, building vast imaginary computers. Cramming dates from Sekigahara to the Shiawase decision, and every action taken by any Megacorp in the last fifty years it might profit an executive to know inside out. In his compact windowless bedroom, slotted like data chips between Renraku apartments, in a tower among ranks of comfortably similar apartment blocks. Very soon there were no more hours for rescuing kimono-clad damsels from ravenous oni, in the dating sims (from Renraku entertainment division) that he’d spent so many passable weekends on. About all he had time or energy left for, a little shamefully, was rubbing himself off to a hentai simsense (past the shell companies, also Renraku-made).

He remembered, getting close to a real, Japanese girl wasn’t allowed for him. But he couldn’t help just looking, and very often they seemed to be looking back at him. Of course, he answered politely whenever they addressed him, with a meek smile and bow. If the girls asked him to run some errand for them or do their classroom chores, then it was practically all he wanted; to be of some use to someone.

Everyone’s future existence was hanging on their exams, the single shining path to corporate life. The girls and the boys studied harder, and the screws turned. It didn’t take anything much, not even a real mistake. The cute, innocent granddaughter of a senior marketing director smiled at him, as she lightly touched his shoulder. He should’ve stopped her, but he didn’t. That was all it took.

His last month of high school had a lot of black space. The boys who had hit him every week since the start had frogmarched him to an empty Renraku warehouse where the rest of the class were waiting, a host of red school uniforms. All of them–Japanese, _Gaijin_ , the stooping tuskless orc girl he’d always felt sorry for–had to punch him, to plainly show that their feelings towards daisy eater perverts were all in conformity with the Renraku spirit. Strength in purity, strength in unity. Show they were part of the team, show where they stood–on his head, by the end, stamping down. A few girls hesitated, but all of them kicked, as hard as they could. When he couldn’t shield his face with his broken arm, Yuu gladly believed he was going to die.

The school sent him to the medbay, who patched him up without a word, except to tell him about the operation. Yuu couldn’t imagine who he’d be if he wasn’t an elf–dirty daisy eater, beaten and hated. Elf ears, clipped ears, _no ears_ , everyone in Renraku knew what he was. Renraku’s whole world-spanning weight would come down on him, if he even tried to fight for his life. He had to think, find the way out, but Renraku was the world, there was nothing but the terror…

His only answer was to bear it until they got bored, even the week after when they started putting out cigarettes in his hair. The week after he tried to fight them, and they beat him bloody. The week after that, with his right ear half torn off, he was alone in his apartment while the 0730, shuttle maglev to the school was hissing away without him. It felt monstrously shameful, like spitting at heaven. Still, when his father finally got an hour between meetings to answer his commlink (His mother, who worked in Finance, never picked up), Yuu told him he would rather go to Yomi Island than go back to school.

“You’ve never seen that place; it’s a hellhole. Think sensibly about this, Yuu. Man up. I’ll talk to the school, I’ll send a car for you; I will make sure that if you are back in school and studying before the end of the day, you will still have a future. A future with Renraku, the best possible future in this world. There’s nothing but scum and misery outside, do you understand? You need to stay out of trouble, swallow your pride and useless feelings, do everything that’s expected of you with a smile until they can’t wipe their own backsides without you. That what I did, for years, to get the security you’ve had since you were born, Yuu. It’s the only way for… _monsters_ like us.”

“….I tried it, Dad. I tried.”

“Renraku does not bring tomorrow’s solutions today by _trying_. You’re going to get through this, Yuu, but you have to be strong. Look, I’ll try to get home this evening. We’ll talk then. You don’t have to go back to school today–I’ll call them. I’ll go with you to formally apologise, tomorrow.”

Yuu said nothing else for the rest of the call. His big fourteen-year-old eyes took in the white, spartan kitchenette, the heavy, soft chairs, the ten thousand nyuyen trideo player. The single flower in a red vase on the coffee table. His home, Renraku’s home; no sanctuary.

He stared at the door to the hallway and couldn’t move, like a monster trapped in a maze. So many human paths converging on a single shining way, barred to him. The way where he fell to be trodden down.

What did it mean to be strong? He only knew he couldn’t be. He could not be a smiling helpful elf without a single unswallowed feeling and that meant he had no place in Renraku. He was no use. After a brief Netsearch, Yuu Kamishiro filled a bath with hot water, retrieved a Renraku-forged sashimi knife from his family’s kitchenette, and chose his own path.


	2. City Streets - Birth

_Daddy won't discuss me_

_Oh, what a stain I must be._

_Mommy couldn't stand,_

_Having such a wound up boy._

_I'm just a wind-up toy._

_–Alice Cooper_

Years ago, after he'd passed some mid-term exam, Yuu Kamishiro's father had requested a Sunday off and taken his son to the site of the promised Renraku Archology. A wall level with small skyscrapers–tomorrow's solution and the world's future–it had seemed awesome. The people thronging the streets with clothes all rough and sharp-edged, voices _uncourteously_ loud, had merely seemed strange. Apart from holidays in rural Japan, Yuu had never left the extraterritorial Renraku complex embedded in Seattle Downtown, since his birth in an exclusive company hospital. Everything was very garish and _American_ , on foreign soil. No one seemed to respect anything, unlike Renraku's people; they looked at his father without even a token show of hiding their distaste.

A black elf lady with a falafel cart grinned at Yuu, and he felt rather funny. He couldn't imagine what it was she had in common with him, a Japanese elf and child of Renraku.

Likewise, with the red-haired elf youth who'd started bawling 'Jap-rat traitor! _Makkanagee Morkhan!_ ' at his father across the street (The first Sperethiel Yuu had ever heard). Two orks in Lone Star armour had thundered after the elf and struck him down with nightsticks–though they quickly stopped the beating, once they realised the suit was hurrying his boy away rather than noting their diligence. Yuu had been glad then to have nothing to do with sprawl streets, strange elves or trog brutes–he had always hated violence, terror and blood.

Three years after the day he'd cut both his wrists open, then dropped out of high school, he was drifting down a heaving Seattle street with an hour before midnight. A Skinny dandelion plucked and discarded into a dirty human river.

The worst parts of Downtown–he'd walked the worst–had trash in the streets, the odd broken window; the odd, broken, street cam. The best of Renton, the middle district, was better than that, but this wasn't it. He'd walked from the graffiti-plastered metro stop through dead dogs and puddles of vomit. Almost every device in a window or heaped on late-night stalls was a trashy Chinese knock-off. The smell drifting east from Tacoma burnt his sinuses to the back of his head–didn't America even have fission reactors or hybrid cars?–above the southern whiff of sulphur and burning landfills from either Puyallup or hell.

Bars were chucking out and nightclubs were firing up the neon; these streets were filled with metahumans, bawling like a wake. Drunks shoving each other about, friends of an hour laughing along. Women stumbling over their heels, cursing as their linked arms kept them from going under. Bare legs shining in the shifting flashes from the clubs–there were no streetlights, or cams, or cops. Yuu tried to avert his eyes from the swollen thighs and lips cavorting over Tri-D ad screens.

Trogs and human toughs, in chrome and black leather, striding with arrogance through the parting crowd. A pink-mohawk busker with an electric guitar, howling something over the din. Countless others, old and young, who trod the street in silence with no group, gang or goal. Like Yuu Kamishiro, as all of it passed across the black mirrors of his unmoving eyes.

For three years he'd had no home with Renraku, his world since he'd been born. No home with his family. Somewhere, there was an elvish land of promise which would have spat on him as their enemy. There was no home for him on the streets, nobody and nothing he knew–all the lights and the laughter held was another world, and all he could do was search.

-0-

His father had changed his mind again, that day; sent a cab to take him back to school. When Yuu hadn't answered the apartment door, the driver had realised what was happening and called Docwagon. There had been tears, words worse than blows, and the long silence.

Turning Yuu over to the Mental Wellbeing Division would have caused comment; brought yet more dangerous shame on the Kamishiro family at the worst time. Just possibly, his parents thought the tomorrow solutions of Renraku had done enough with their child already. They told Yuu he would always have a home with them, they would provide all he needed. He didn't have to go back to school or do anything else again.

It wasn't uncommon. A SINner who fell from the path of Renraku's grace was a dead twig cut from the tree by their own sick weakness. No future–nothing outside the apartment except nightmares and hate for him. Nothing else in the building, Renraku's compound, _Renraku's city_ , except humans who would tear him apart if they could only get away with it–and had. He could only hide. Never escape.

Alone with fear in the dark, it seeped down to his marrow. But wasn't a room, three meals and a cyberterminal, more than a pathetic, _useless_ Skinny deserved?

A year passed, before he tried to try leaving the apartment, but he didn't even know why. There was nowhere for him to go, except some other small room that Renraku owned. His parents still worked hard at their jobs, often not coming home to sleep. Occasionally they passed meals to him in his room; usually, he ordered noodles over the net.

His human mother could hardly look at him; he'd realised that she'd never really thought of an elf as her son. The human baby girl she eventually sent to the company nursery was a defective's replacement, not his sister. His father had sat with him sometimes, at first, but that had only redoubled the pain. They had no words to break the silence, except that he, Yuu Kamishiro, had messed up everything.

He'd tried not to make trouble. Worked to be the best he could be. For Renraku, for nothing. There was no more point to the schoolwork he had laboured on to build up his mind, when his worthless elvish heart had utterly failed. He spent homogenised hours playing his dating sims, or his fighting games, or reading every digital manga he hadn't had time to follow for ages. Tales of adventure, ninjas, soldiers and warriors who suffered and trained and never gave up. All humans, not elves–but weren't the demonic horrors they faced worse than anything in his own world? Couldn't he be what he had struggled so hard to try to be–a little better than the dirty daisy eater he was? For Renraku women had to be practically as strong and professional as men, he'd learned that. He'd learned he was more impotent and weak than any human woman, but if he only worked hard, even now, couldn't he possibly grow a little stronger?

Hadn't his father told him, he had to be strong? Man up. There was no other way he could see.

He had downloaded _The Book of Five Rings_ , _Hagakure_ and enough martial arts manuals to learn you couldn't gain anything by reading only. He'd planned the nutritional build of his meals–his parents didn't care how much of their salaries he spent–carefully as his sleep and study schedule in exam season. He'd understood that correct technique, muscle memory and experience was the only path to strength. He had delivered two hundred straight textbook punches, every morning and evening without fail, for the best part of three years.

Pushing up from the floor on hardening knuckles, kicking slavering trogs apart through a Matrix headset, he had trained himself, for no purpose but strength. By the fiftieth punch there was no concept of purpose; no thought, no pain. No fear. If elves were skinny, sly and weak then strong was all that he would be.

But it had not been enough. After almost three years he had finally left his room. Moved rapidly through the nightmare haunted complex, and boarded the first metro leaving Renraku soil for Seattle. Every place in that foreign world was one to him–filled with loud, frightening humans, open spaces that blows would come from-but he'd fought his fear, remembered his training. Looked no one in the eye, even when they stared. He had wandered the worst parts of Downtown by night, at first, to avoid cameras–through his corporate SIN his parents could have found where he had gone and when, with a simple enquiry to their Building Security Officer. In the event, they never said a word. Work was demanding more of them than ever; it had been too long since they'd had anything to do for him, or with him.

He had wandered the streets, in the shadows of skyscrapers, archologies and distant factories, heading to nowhere he'd ever known, despite being terrified of everything. The first night when a young human with chains on his ripped jeans swaggered towards him, his mind had gone white. His second hundred and first punch of that day had dropped the street-punk like a sack.

He didn't think of running–and the man might have had a gun. How the world could hurt had been carved on his core. He'd never been free to run–except by taking a knife to his wrists–only to hide in his room, and he was not going back. Never. His only future was on the streets, _somewhere_ ; if he went back there was nothing but the helpless dark. Better dead than useless.

–0–

The next guy to accost him on the street had been a big ork, growling something in his troggy voice–any thought of a different survival strategy left Yuu's head, and his fist smashed into the trog's jaw between two syllables. He didn't hate the poor ugly monster, or exactly enjoy it–he was too scared for that. He just wanted to live, without hiding in his room until he grew old and died. To step out of his apartment one day without such fear.

He had trained, his technique had been correct; his mind had emptied like a cell, and then power erupted through. He'd been tested for magic years ago, he wasn't a mage or shamanphysical adepts were security guards, his dad would never have wanted that for him. The fact was, he could knock out a trog with one punch, and screaming knuckles. He'd need to condition them harder, fix it his mind what he'd done and how it had felt

He avoided patrolling Lone Star officers as much as security cams. Even one he failed to evade recognized him as another slumming teen SINner from his clothes–though he was wearing the cheapest, darkest hoodie and sneakers his parents had ever bought him. The tubby cop checked his Comm ID, hinted at where he could get a cheap fake SIN, if he wanted a drink before his twenty-first birthday, and told him to mind how he went.

One night there were three humans, no more than two years each on his seventeen, coming for him in blue gang-colour jackets and tattoos. He could see the gun stuck in a belt–but he saw that _they_ didn't see any threat. He knew his posture was naturally very submissive and unthreatening.

One punch, two and three. Too shocked to use the little time they had before hitting asphalt, except to gape. The first one was scrabbling for the gun. Yuu hit the teen's fauxhawked head twice more, and then ran with his knuckles howling. The terror was still there, but something like the satisfaction of passing a test, clearing a level– _doing something well_ –poured through his body for hours.

Three nights later, there was a boy and a girl with grey jackets in the street ahead–then three more behind. The one who stepped forward, once they'd herded him to a walled parking lot, was the Japanese teen with gold datajacks on his shaved scalp, circuits tattooed down both bare arms.

"You're the thug Hunter, then. Renraku's crazy pet elf. Do they think a dickless Skinny can win them honour, those honourless red dogs? You took out those Shiawase _ahoes_ good, but we're the Fuchi Youth League! Children of the greatest megacorp in Imperial Japan!"

"Erm, ah, _sumimasen_. At least in drone design, and several computing fields, _Renraku_ –"

Yuu hadn't been able to stop himself. The Fuchi Youth boss screamed a corporate slogan as his punch flew from the hip. Not so fast that Yuu couldn't get up his guard, but three punches later he was stunned, bloody, heaving fear. He knew from what he'd read, the ganger was breathing like a _karateka_. Then the kick shot out at his stomach; he barely leapt-stumbled back. Not broken in two but winded.

His stance was shattered. The wall behind him. A circle of howling gangers behind their boss, and his pupils were madly dilating with some drug, as he charged–but Yuu knew too well he was going to die if he didn't fight.

He was dead if his skull was cracked on the wall. If he dodged and the punch hit the wall, he'd have a chance…but the ganger must have read his huge, fear-shining eyes. With a sneer, the Fuichi closed the distance in one lunge–too close for a straight, for a jab, inches from the fists that hid Yuu's face–driving an elf-breaking punch at his stomach. Not karate; a street trick.

But Yuu had crammed more than martial arts. His slim, elvish arm went up, and the thin point of his elbow hit the Fuchi's eye socket. The smallest striking surface for the greatest effective force. His other fist hooked up through his foe's retreating jaw, the instant he had space. Then he moved with all the speed in his elvish body, loaded with three years of sleek muscle, eyes flaring like the wings of a hawk, and rabbit-punched the Fuichi fragger's face into the wall. Again.

The human teen dropped bonelessly in a shower of broken brick. Yuu stared down at the hideous, bloody face, his own ravaged knuckles. The horrible thing he'd done. Humans had beaten him into the dirt for years–the thing like a man, the daisy-eating monster. The only solace deep in his heart, in that prison of pain, had been that he was not a cruel human monster like them.

He dropped to his knees. The beautiful elvish eyes he raised to the four gangers fumbling for their batons and guns, were pouring tears.

" _Renraku_ , banzai!" A voice suddenly screamed out, "Red Guards attack! Frag the fragging Fuchi fraaagggaaas!"

Ten young men and women in red jackets charged onto the lot. The smaller Fuchi Youth League crew quickly scattered over walls and down alleys, leaving their boss and another comrade bleeding into the gravel. Yuu was seriously glad the Fuchi ganger-girl had run; he might have been too scared to hit her if his life depended on it, to say nothing of watching what the Red Guards might have done to her.

He'd known since middle school, the Red Guards were a street gang, with a core of Renraku's high school dropouts and spirited young non-conformists. Even such deviants could serve with honour–he'd overheard–by smashing up non-Renraku businesses and fighting off youth gangs linked to the other Japanacorps. It was surprising he'd never considered that Shiawase, Mitsuhama and Fuchi's young people would all have much the same paths and pitfalls as Renraku's.

The Red Guards cheerfully told him he was tough for a daisy eater; they knew he was Renraku and would've inducted him on the spot, except he was an elf. He was just about certain that two of the slick-haired young men grinning down had kicked him round the toilets every week, years ago…yes, held him down and pulled off his pants, to see if the skinny really had one. He was too tired, bloodied, horrified and scared to say anything; he finally dragged himself back to the precious safety his bedroom offered. Safety, but no peace.

–0–

It had been a week before he'd gone out again; he nearly didn't. But the Fuchi hadn't died, he'd only been protecting his own life, and he was not weak. Nothing else worked. Nothing but that grim glory of winning, hurtling forward even into terror and pain. In the gaze of those laughing, hateful human thugs, he could not be afraid.

When he'd punched out a ganger in black and orange colours, then found out on the net that he'd been a Halloweener...he had decided to shift from the bad end of Downtown to Renton, the next District. He obviously wasn't mad enough to head for _Redmond_ , so this was where he was. The crowds had trickled into the booming clubs by now, but he was still out on the street.

Some skinheads were shouting 'knife ears' and 'skinny little fag', between drunken guffaws. He kept walking, eyes down. Unless they went after him, he wasn't rushing into stupid risks–and he was not here to attack anyone, only to defend his life and his space. Verbal abuse didn't hurt him that much anymore, when he knew he was far worse than anything they'd said.

Down the sidewalk, he saw a girl with her boyfriend notice him–a young, unsmiling Japanese elf in a black hoodie–and pull her young man across to the other side of the street. Her fear made Yuu feel sad. There were trogs or street thugs now who came after him, looking to carve a reputation onto his skull, but he'd never attacked anybody. He simply punched them down as they came on, and kept on wandering, like a netgame hero levelling up on slimes. _No_ , deadly poison slimes, with knives and guns. Whatever he was looking for, he had to find it quickly before he died.

And now there were three trogs, handguns on their hips and gang-coloured leather on their backs, rolling down the street behind him. He'd left the main drag; there were scummy silent tenements on both sides, and no one else on the street but a stray dog. Yuu sunk his shoulders, choked down fear. Tried to look as harmless and penniless as he could, in his branded sneakers. Curled hands into fists, inside his hoodie pockets.

Then there was another figure, ahead–a woman, in the flickering light of an old shop sign. Japanese, human, barely older than he was. Pale cheeks worn from the slums, but still tinted with life behind her short, dyed hair. With a barely visible glance at the elf boy and the orks looming behind him, she ducked into an alley, dark boots clicking. The orks shoved past Yuu, and he watched them follow her.

Rough faces expressed nothing, but beady eyes glanced one to another, briefly as monsters that knew what they were doing. Yuu heard running feet, a thump, no scream.

This wasn't a netgame. He had to be calm as water, cold as an executive closing a deal. No hero's reward from the rescued maiden, just final, ignominious death under the boots of thugs...unless he forced out all fear, lust and rage, and thought clearly, as the power poured down to his fists that would kill the filthy trogs.

He took the corner at a sprint. The girl had reached a courtyard at the alley's end, tried to get over a wall–she was lying where they'd pulled her down, blood under her head. One trog was rooting through her bag, one reaching for the girl–another turning to him, gun coming out. All the thought in Yuu's being went out with the perfect punch that cracked through the monster's skull, just as the bullet cracked air over his head. Through black mist, he saw the fear in the trog's eyes, for only an instant. There were still two of them, armed and harder than him, he could not stop.

Yuu was next distinctly aware that he had knife stuck through his side, blood oozing. The claw marks on his scalp, the pulp that had been his knuckles, still punching what was left of the third ork's face. The girl was recovering consciousness, and trying to crawl as far from him as she could.

Yuu didn't blame her for being scared of a monster, and hadn't done it for gratitude; all he could do himself was stare at her, alive like him. A shout finally broke through the ringing in his ears, and his eyes snapped up to meet with twenty rage-filled glares from every side.

Only a few gang colours; the rest were slummers, ordinary orks and humans. Torn, faded clothes, pinched faces and every weapon their hands could grasp; bats, chair legs, shotguns. A towering troll woman in overalls stared down at him, with hatred burning harder than even he had ever seen.

"You're the _Hunter_. You're that Jap elf fragger comes slumming from Downtown. You've got everything there, and we've got drek, but that ain't enough for you. You gotta come here to hunt, you've gotta stroll round beating our men bloody for your fragging KICKS! Like we're SINless animals, like you can do what you fragging want to our brothers, husbands, sons! Those Humanis fraggers hate us, but you don't know anyone exists but _you_ , FRAGGING DREKHEAD SINNER!"

"…no. They were going to–"

Yuu stared desperately at the shaking girl. Her bag on the ground, and the dull red capsules spilling from it.

"You stupid drekhead. Those boys you hurt protect this hood from Humanis, and the thrill-gangers. Crazy fraggers like you. And the Yakuza who want to move up from Tacoma killing trogs as they go, and the fragging _drug runners_ helping them do it! Frag that girl, that outsider; nobody gives a frag about her. Frag Jap elves who don't know nothing; except trogs are nothing but animals to kill or hate!"

_"–sick fragger–!"_

_"–better boys than you–!"_

_"–Jap-rat fascist–!"_

_"–fragging daisy eater–!"_

The circle closed. Even without the blood from his side filling his sneakers, Yuu could barely raise his fists. He only warded two blows, before a tyre iron struck him down into endless dark. 


	3. The Adept - Life

_But think on this maxim and put off your sorrow,_

_The wretch of today may be happy tomorrow._

_–The Beggar's Opera_

“Hey, fresh meathead. Idiot. Wake up.”

Dead meat was what Yuu felt like. His bare chest did still _look_ quite something, loaded from his neck to his bloodstained boxers with almost more muscle than his elvish frame could hold. He’d bulked up his legs to take low kicks as well, his thighs to buttress all those punches–three years since every human at an exclusive Renraku feedschool had used him as their punching bag or ashtray, it wasn't the first time this body hadn't felt like his at all. Right now, he felt weak as a kitten who’d been beaten to drek by a lynch mob. His head was hammering through what felt like a lot of drugs; the smell of cheap disinfectant didn't cover the blood and vomit.

The Japanese slum girl he’d sort of saved–who must have saved him–was sitting cross legged next to his mattress with her own head plastered. Her eyes were hard and only warmed by anger, but her hand on his chest seemed to have nowhere else it particularly wanted to go.

“…they hurt you? Ah. Ow. Miss…?”

“Not much. And that’s Saki to you, corp boy. Just Saki.”

First name, no honourific. So… _informal_. Yuu was seventeen; he though her own chest was, um, _very_ nice in its own way, and his reaction would have been embarrassingly physical if he hadn’t been half dead.

“Why’d you…do that?” Saki nodded at the scars down both his wrists, “Corper elf. Strong, rich _and_ hot. If anyone’s on top of this drekky world, it ought to be you.”

“It’s not like that. You don’t know...”

“No, I don’t know the reason, but I know you were a fool. Life's drek; we really know that, here. But no reason’s worth anything if you’re dead.” 

“ _Saki?_ If you’re done copping a feel off that poor drekhead–” A high, nervous voice behind her, “–maybe let’s have a discussion, how we’re maybe gonna get out of this ungeeked?”

-0-

Apart from the doctor–no, the ripperdoc–with a lined, disturbingly cheerful face, and gold-rimmed cybereyes, there were now also a monkey-like dwarf and a quiet black human boy squatting round his sickbed. Yuu had never even seen a haruman dwarf from India on the trids–he actually had a _tail_ –but his name, or 'handle' was Hideyoshi and he was very definitely real and present.

They were Saki’s chummers. Her _crew_. Yuu _was_ learning a lot of new words, and his stomach didn’t feel like this rabbithole of sharp edges had any stopping place within reach.

“How did you…?”

“Those guys weren’t monsters, just angry. I shoved through to you, I must’ve been batdrek–they maybe realised we were just a couple of half-dead kids. Told me to frag off with the SINner and never come back. If you hadn't been there, those trog gangers might’ve killed me, _raped_ me...they’d have definitely beaten me to drek and sold the drugs on. Protect that hood from other drekhead gangers, do what they want with outsiders and bad girls…that’s their bulldrek. You did the right thing.” Her hand still wasn’t going anywhere.

“The _drugs_ , Saki,” The haruman dwarf sang out, “The fragging _drugs_ …”

“Your bag. You lost them?”

“Oh, I had a few in my bag and most of the stuff hidden somewhere else; just common sense. So, I had something to pay Doc with, two days ago, to take us in and put you back together.”

“Cracked skull and contusion.” ‘Doc’ obligingly broke in, “Abdominal stab wound with serious blood loss, broken ribs, internal bleeding…it amazes me what young people can live through these days, with the help of modern medical science.”

The backroom clinic did have some very high-end equipment, but its visible maintenance and cleanliness weren’t very settling to Yuu’s mind at all. Still, getting the drek beaten out of him was something he was used to. Then an ice-cold thought penetrated his headache.

“You had to sell the drugs. From…the Yakuza? Isn’t that…?”

“Frag do they teach you, at rich corper drekhead school?” The dwarf’s voice accelerated to a screech, “The fragging Yakuza! Ya-ku-sa, the hand where you lose the whole pot, and they cut off everything _but_ your little finger! O Buddha, _why_ did Mum and Dad ever move from New Delhi? We only had neo-Maoists to deal with there, and cyber-cultists, and triads. Saki! Why the frag did you do it? We were going to be shadowrunners, not drug runners, not _dead_ –!”

Shadowrunners. Yuu had seen them in the Trid dramas; deadly, elusive operatives who could even thumb their noses at any lesser megacorp than Renraku. But none of these dirty-faced, hungry slummers could be over nineteen. 

“My brother, _he’s_ a shadowrunner, but us right now?” Saki fired back, “We’re two-bit kids who could be Runners–will be! If we hustle along, build up our cred, take any safe, simple job we can get!”

“Safe, and simple. My _hoop_ safe and simple!”

“What other biz were we gonna get, with less static than just delivering a package? I bet even FastJack had to take delivery jobs, before he could afford a real cyberdeck, Yoshi!”

Yoshi bristled dangerously; he’d made some visible effort to customise the ancient cracked Sony deck on his back. 

“We keep the peace in our berg. Sort drek out.” Pip, the human boy, had a low, rich voice when he did speak, “Drugs and Yaks ain’t small time, Saki. You nearly got geeked.”

Yuu timidly broke the silence to mention that he didn’t have much money, but his parents might–

“Oh, we threw the Yaks your credstick right off. That’s why we’re not already dead,” Yoshi explained with exaggerated brightness, “Your shoes fetched a good few nyuyen for the brand, even with the bloodstains. Saki messaged the only number on your comm, saying you were staying at a chummer's place for a few nights and you could really use about a thousand nyuyen.”

“I’ve been a shut-in for three years. I don’t have any friends.”

“Gotcha. That explains the call we got back; your dear parents will pay anything, if we only return you unharmed. Hah! That and a nyuyen’ll get you a hot dog–if we hadn’t chucked your comm in the river they’d have traced it by now, and the Red Samurai would be rappelling in to kill us all with our families. If drugs are out of our league, then kidnapping a fragging corp brat–!” Yoshi waved all _four_ hands, as his voice rose to a shriek again, before he visibly reined it in and stared straight at Yuu, along with Saki and Pip, “So, we, meaning you, need some other, safe, way to get that fragging nyuyen now.”

“A few kidney donations should cover it.” Doc merrily suggested, “I’m sure your folks will get you a nice new one, corper; from a slum kid like one of these guys for a song, likely as not. Nice to have with steak in a pie, too, kidneys.”

Yuu wanted to ask how this _wasn’t a_ kidnapping, if he couldn’t crawl home or even call his parents. He wanted to ask why…the _frag_ his drek life wouldn’t ever stop beating him down? These SINless, shameless criminals, born for the slums, had to be adapted for miserable disaster; hell was surely their home and habitat. He had been born for heaven, Renraku’s tomorrow birthright, with his own personal hell inside and around him. He’d tried to help, he’d tried to fight. He had suffered alone so long, a wolf in a trap for _years_ , and he was ready to break…

_“…you don’t even think we exist, you FRAGGING DREKHEAD SINNER!”_

Pain above pain, the troll woman’s words finally broke through. With Saki’s hard and caustic, but _expectant_ eyes–these SINless kids existed, they were nonplussed and terrified. He didn’t know what they, or anyone else, had to do to live here; he didn’t know their pain. His parents’ terror and pain, even now, even as he’d lived off their nyuyen and hopes for years! He’d seen nothing but his own pain; a wound-crazed beast, a miserable monster. But not a monster alone–Saki, even Yoshi and Pip, were staring at him, _expecting that he could help them_. It was a pure, glorious feeling.

“You’re _Hunter_ , right?” Saki responded, when he asked why, “You’ve been putting down gangers with your bare fists from here to Downtown. I mean, you’re a chip truth _phys-adept_ , right?”

Yuu had simply filled a clear mind with his physical body and its energy; a killing power flowed to his fists that could apparently, terribly, crack an ork’s skull.

“Sounds like a fragging Adept,” The guys had the same gleam in the eyes as Saki; even green phys-adepts were practically shadowrunners already, “Sounds like you’ve got a lot to learn. D’you want to make sure we all have some life left, to learn with?”

“You’re…talking about stealing?”

“Probably not killing. Anything to get that money in less than week...”

"...so long as it ain't dangerous, this time."

“I think…I could do dangerous.”

“That means you’re a dumb newbie. Newbie.” Pip intoned.

Yuu’s black immovable eyes held Pip’s slum-hardened stare. The older boy broke away first, snorted, and dealt Yuu a chummerly punch on the arm that nearly ruptured him. Saki rolled her eyes with a ‘dumb boys’ smile.

-0-

They agreed if they’d found nothing inside a week, they’d rob a Stuffer Shack or a drug lab. Pip got his ear right to the ground for anyone street-level with a job. Even a bigger score they might steal in turn from the Runners who took the job, if they were desperate. Yuu hardly knew of any unguarded back doors to Renraku labs, but Yoshi used his account details and Corp SIN to briefly get onto the lowest tier of the corporate matrix network. While Saki and Yuu spent the nights traipsing through Renton nightclubs. Avoiding security cams, hunting for any slumming SINner they could get on their own and rob–it wasn’t any time to stick at anything.

Saki assured Yuu his corp manners and ‘elf mojo’ would put the rich kids right off their guard, and that she wouldn’t let him out of her sight, before he got any ideas.Yuu got the idea again of somehow getting the nyuyen off his parents, but the whole crew had shouted that path down as an unacceptable risk. He hadn't even strongly argued the point; he couldn't feel his absence from his room would make much difference to their lives. They'd said they'd _pay anything_ , but that was practically all they'd done for him, ever.

He was a total bust as the Face, even if he still spoke like a corp kid–something in his eyes, or maybe even his posture, now, had corp kids on a night out getting as far from him as they could. His heart really wasn’t in something so dishonest anyway; spending time around Saki, with her bold, chirping voice and once-in-a blue-moon smile–an actual 3-D girl, perhaps in the last week of both their lives–honestly took up more of his concentration.

“…biggest job we did so far was burn down this two-bit bar for the owner’s insurance scam. Ten to one we were really a distraction from something else, since the Star pulled up shooting inside a minute. Nearly got geeked for fragging nothing; so near I could feel the chill. Still, I’d take another insurance job right now, if we could get one. Honestly, you’ve got to be a bit mad for this life.”

Yuu wanted to ask if she’d killed anyone, if she would actually kill for money, but if he hadn't killed the orks who’d attacked her that had been nothing but chance, and he was trying not to think about it. Doing whatever it took to survive didn’t come naturally yet, but he hoped it soon would; when Saki looked at him, he absolutely wanted to survive. 

“Um, so what's your, er, job in this crew…?”

“Not seducing rich idiots, so don’t get your hopes up yet. I’m a rigger; I was taking cars apart before I could walk, more or less. I was going to get a proper drone with the pay from that fragging transport job.”

“You said your brother was a shadowrunner. Couldn’t he help us?”

“He didn’t want me getting involved; he’d make me promise to get a job at nuke-a-burgers. Not an option.” Saki crossed her arms and scowled. “We haven’t belonged on the light side since our stupid old man got blacklisted from Fuchi. The corps took ten years to finish our dad--it was synthol that geeked him, but they fragging broke him. If those fraggers own the world then I’m only ever going to live in the Shadows.”

“I…think I know what you mean, Saki.”

Her eyes weren’t very believing, until she’d looked into his for quite a while. Long enough for a couple of Lone Star officers to appear at the far end of the street. They would’ve been given Yuu’s description–they were plodding along without paying attention to anything, but it was a fair excuse for Saki to push Yuu into an alley and hide his face by kissing it.

She purred like an engine as his hands shook on her sides–Yuu thought distant thoughts, and just about got through it without embarrassing himself seriously.

Pip and Yoshi, thankfully undistracted, turned up a couple of leads. A carelessly unclassified netmail about secret Renraku labs in the Barrens. Miles out of their league, even without nasty surprises, but one lab had been shot up by real Runners and abandoned, over a week ago. There was sweat and blood before Yoshi managed to deck through what was left of the security system with his cracked Sony. After all that, the wrecked lab had no overlooked valuable paydata; nothing left except a couple of cheap medkits.

The net-mail had also talked about a missing scientist, however; an extraction. Pip had heard enough crazy rumours to start a mucksheet; but one about some Runners who’d abduct a Renraku scientist, just over a week ago, who had given the wageslave his freedom rather than pass him to their Johnson. No one owned shadowrunners, they could do that sort of thing, or so the three slummers believed. Yuu, in turn, could naturally imagine a corper fleeing the gilded cage for life and liberty.

Then there was Heart ‘O the City, a scummy old fleabag hotel in Renton, where an oldish guy with a scientist's looks, and trashed corper clothes, had been holed up in a room for several days. As if in hiding–it was the break in a million they needed.

It turned out a bit unsettling for Yuu to watch his new friends uncache a couple of Fichetti handguns and a sawed-off, then duct-tape on the scraps of armour Yoshi had scavenged. Still, he was going unarmed and they eyed him with respect–unjustified by any courage or composure that he felt more deeply than his lips and eyes.

Saki had told him to wrap his hands with tape and plastic strips, ‘for frag’s sake’, but Yuu noticed the deep fellowship and trust between the three chummers that stopped at him. He was the new guy, after all, on this team; he'd failed to learn the teamwork skills at school that were the engine of Renraku's eternal success. He was still ready to fight for their team down to the bottom of his spirit.

Whether their real plan had been to sell, rob, blackmail or beg from him, the rumoured runaway Renraku researcher turned up an appalling bust. The old man in the hotel room babbled about working on everything from Echo Mirage to the Manhattan Project; the source of the rumours had been a deluded crazy. They were debating whether to rob the old coot of even the clothes he was wearing, from sheer frustration–when they heard gunshots below them. Whooping voices and thumping boots on the stairs.

After all he’d lived through, and walked madly into, Yuu had thought he’d no fear left. Until those little deadly pops filled his stomach with the same terror he saw on Saki and Yoshi’s faces. Most likely, it hadn’t only been them who’d been listening to rumours.

-0-

Pip quickly made it clear to Yuu and the others that there was nothing they needed to do here except get out the back alive. His unwavering voice rallied their confidence; the crew moved quickly to the back stairs, while the mad ‘scientist’ ambled off somewhere, shrilly complaining about the noise.

They got to the ground floor, but the back exit was through the kitchen. Where three uzi-waving gangers in the Cutters’ yellow-black jackets had lined the cook-staff up on their knees. They looked on the point of expressing their dissatisfaction with slim pickings of nyuyen through a hail of lead.

“Hoi, Omaes.”

Pip’s voice was careful and still calm, his shotgun lowered, as he stepped forward. Yuu felt his own feet moving in unity. He fought to keep his fists down. Couldn’t keep the same terror from his own face that he saw in the hostage’s silent howls–but if had rushed to die only for himself, why shouldn’t he step up and face death for them? What was his strength, if it wasn’t strength like his chummer next to him?

“You lookin’ to be a hero, breeder?” The lead ganger spat.

“No need. You’re here for that old scientist on floor five, right?”

“Huh, yeah. And everything else we can take.”

The Cutter leered at Saki. Yuu’s vision went black at the edges.

“…we’re _shadowrunners_ , you _drekhead_. If you think you can beat us–!”

“–or _want_ to, when the Star must be _minutes_ away?” Yoshi screechingly cut in, “Renton, not Redmond, you know!”

“A few hundred creds left in this pile, tops.” Pip added, as swiftly, “Big profits, no dumb risks; ain’t that the Cutters’ way?”

A megagang run like a megacorp; if the Corps owned the world–the original Cutters had reasoned–their way had to be worth something. It wasn’t lost on the gang thugs either that the only elf without a weapon had unshaking legs and eyes as fixed as a rabid hawk. They knew bullets weren’t quick to stop a guy as drugged off his skull as this fragger looked, even before weird shadowrunner adept drek figured into costs-benefits.

With a few parting curses, the Cutters jandered out of the kitchen. The four cook-staff were racing out the back the second their legs could support them. Shots and screams from the floors above, as the Cutters spread through the building.

“Well, newbie, there’s some elven charisma that nearly got us fragging _geeked_ , again!” Yoshi snapped, “Leaving the building, now?”

“The people in the hotel.” Yuu’s eyes hadn’t changed, “We can save them…Pip? You stepped up. You did save them.”

“Frag was I thinking? Alright. Saki, search with your drone from outside.”

“On it.” Face flushed but determined, Saki pulled the bog-basic unarmed drone from her rucksack, and her controller, “Going in with you, though. Don’t need line of sight on Tengu, only on you dorks.”

Yoshi swore a lot but didn’t take the out Pip offered him. Even if Yuu was the newbie, none of them believed they could be shadowrunners if they backed down.

On the stairwell before the second floor, a human Cutter was pinning down a woman while a dwarf ganger tore down her jeans. Yuu heard her faint sobs before he saw her bloody face; before that he had driven the dwarf into the wall, and it had been gladness to feel the ganger's neck break. The other Cutter went for his revolver, as Saki poured Fichetti bullets into his chest.

Bloodless resolution had been a wonderful surprise, but reasonable words and grins could hide the heart of evil; insatiable hunger for the pain of the helpless. Yuu didn’t regret becoming a fighter, and now a killer, in this Sixth World where he lived. He'd never hesitate to answer malice with violence, now the glory of saving lives, helping people _at last_ with his own strength and will, was flooding through his chest like the moment of falling in love. The woman's brown eyes were still full of fear, as his had been, but no worse. Their lives, still crushable as trash in a world like this; but he would fight. 

-0-

They told the woman to run, and the family they found hiding on the second floor. On the third floor there ran into six armed Cutters on the landing. Yuu knew he should’ve known that the little voice telling him he couldn’t die was madness.

They all dived into a looted room, as bullets cracked through plaster and concrete. By the door, Pip held fire until the last moment, threw back two charging orks with his shotgun blast–then spun and slumped with an SMG burst down his side.

Yuu hauled his chummer out of the doorway. Yoshi almost bolted out the window until Saki screamed MEDKIT! in his face. She gripped her Fichetti, stared at the door full of bullets and then stared at Yuu. He knew she was brave, but _he_ couldn’t have done it; death was closer and louder than anything the slum girl had faced, and he was just the newbie; terror-struck.

But Saki, Yoshi, and Pip with shock-glazed eyes, were looking to him. Renraku had been a pyramid of orders and slaves, but the greenest Runner that was any Runner at all had to be ready to carry his whole team back to the light.

He was an adept, but couldn’t charge out against bullets. This was an ancient hotel on its last legs, though, with a very big crack in that plaster wall.

Oblivious to charging gangers outside, as if back in his room on Renraku soil, Yuu cleared his mind. Stepped back as he filled his shoulder with power, and smashed clear through the wall in a cloud of death-white dust. Into the next room, the Cutters on the landing swivelling heads and guns; as Saki dived out into the corridor screaming and firing. Yuu's shoulder was numb, but he'd used his right; his left hook sent a ganger crashing into the floor.

They got two of six. Then Uzi fire leapt up from the floorboards around Saki. A troll in yellow and black sent Yuu staggering down with a punch. Levelled his sawn-off.

Then six revolver shots seemed to shake the whole hotel. When Yuu regained his footing and vision the Cutters were dead in a heap. An elf in a metallic grey coat was standing behind them, with his second Ruger Warhawk loaded and aimed.

The elf had pale gold hair, one chrome-and-black-glass cybereye. His own dark eye showed an unmistakable epicanthus and a cold flame of undying rage. Supposing his mother had been the blonde elf, and his father had been Japanese–an executive with expensive tastes in women, perhaps?–then Yuu had a very fair idea where that rage might have been born. He also moved like a snake on skillwires; Yuu had no doubt this was a real shadowrunner, as was the female troll hefting an assault rifle behind him.

“Whatever you want…we’re on our way out.” Yoshi scuttled over to Saki, hands raised, “Hey…don’t tell me _you_ heard that bloody rumour about the missing scientist as well?”

“Seemed like an easy payday,” The troll woman snorted, “Even the pros need one sometimes, greenhorn.”

“Well, we kind of really need one.” Saki’s voice was cracked, and she couldn’t have stood, but she spoke, “By tomorrow, or we’re all going to be dead.”

The blonde elf shifted his cold-flame gaze from Yuu to Saki; something flared there that might had been admiration or pity.

“There may be something of interest to you on the cyberterminal in the penthouse suite. It seems that the Cutters have already set fire to this building–” Yuu suddenly caught the whiff of smoke, though death and cordite, “–but if you cannot retrieve the data and escape, you will certain not survive long in the Shadows. If one or two of you live out the year–” His eye flicked to Yuu, briefly, “–then one of my own present associate’s spots will almost certainly need filling.”

“Didn’t know you cared, _Stark_.” The troll gunner grumbled.

The Runners moved swiftly to the fire escape; the troll kicked down the jammed doors. On the other side–Yuu caught a glimpse of the old man, the supposed Renraku scientist–the supposed _fake_ scientist. Who’d _faked_ his madness, and given his would-be teenage abductors the complete and utter slip? Who he really was, however, whether the Runners were his kidnappers or bodyguards, and what happened to the rumoured runaway Renraku researcher in the end, Yuu never knew.

He also never knew just how he got Pip and Saki out of the burning Heart ‘O the City. Sometimes both of them dragging Pip, sometimes him dragging on both, blinded and choking all the way. He might have been too drained to kick through the fire door–the lobby was already a furnace–if Saki hadn’t unjammed the lock, and pulled him through into the cold lights of the street.

Yoshi, determined to redeem his poor showing hitherto, had shined up the hotel’s side like the monkey he resembled. Decked his way through the terminal with smoke rising round his bare feet, then climbed back down with flames licking his ears. Once he’d found Yuu and the rest, and stopped coughing long enough to speak, he made a comm call to the hotel’s owner, about some kind of reward for rescuing some of his guests. In fact (with no mention of anything like _blackmail_ ), since there had been netmails to the Cutters gang on that terminal, arranging for them to abduct the alleged scientist and raid the hotel, in exchange for their burning the place down in an insurance scam…quite a large reward might be in order.

-0-

The ‘reward’ came to slightly less than it would have cost the hotel owner to put a hit on them, but since the Cutters crew were too dead to strongarm a large percentage of his insurance payout, the owner had few complaints. There was enough nyuyen to pay off the Yakuza and even throw a modest celebratory booze-up. Pip, on his feet again with a couple of cheap medkits, got all the neighbours round to their squat in North Tacoma. They’d most likely need a free meal or so themselves next week, he’d said; and Yuu had already learnt the value of his chummer’s words. The calm, quiet boy he would have broken every Cutter in Seattle to avenge, if it had come to that..yes, his chummer, his first friend. 

He even met Masato, Saki's brother, the phys adept shadowrunner. He was the most handsome human Yuu had ever seen, with jaw-length black hair, a gold cross round his neck, and muscles like living rock down his bare arms. He glanced pityingly at the datajack on Yuu neck, that Yuu could only think of as part of his body. He observed the storied one-two gravely, said he had a lot to learn; Yuu thought that sounded novahot. Then Masato grasped his arm with a smile, and thanked him for watching out for his sister. Something in his eyes told Yuu that messing about with Masato's kid sister would be...about as dumb as everything else he'd been doing for the last three years.

Yuu had been a bit shocked to meet Pip’s girl; Stella was a slim ork with a big smile and six-month twin babies clutched to her chest. Nineteen wasn’t young for an ork mother, she said–she only let her man mess with shadowruns, or leave her bed for anything except sleep, because the _eight_ little Pips and Stellas she was hoping for would cost a fair whack of nyuyen. Love and motherhood were a better satisfaction than her irregular drek-bottom jobs stacking Stuffers; she and Pip had very visibly made a happy home amongst squalour. Yuu was very aware that the ragged gathering of metahumans sprawled round the flat, laughing and chugging synthol, came from a different strange world; where people were actually glad to meet him instead of despising his existence.

He couldn't tell them where he'd come from, but that apparently made him a 'dark elvish stranger' as well as 'the novahot newbie'. It had all felt uncertain but not uncomfortable at the start, before he’d been daft enough to try homebrewed synthol. He’d already emptied his stomach on the sidewalk by the Heart ‘O the City Hotel’s fire-gutted wreck; the cheap soydogs he’d had for dinner were threatening to go the same way.

Yoshi finished telling for the fourth time how he had found the paydata and saved the day, before drunkenly hopping on a table and essaying a Bollywood dance routine to general applause; except for Pip, who pulled his chummer aside and gave him water. While Saki quietly grasped Yuu’s hand and dragged him out into the cool evening air. She left the music she’d been put in charge of to take care of itself–she was nutty about Maria M and rock as Yuu had been about netgames, and he’d found he had as little to say about the one as he about the other. But feeling the strength of her hand and seeing the shine in her eyes, Yuu could deeply believe that their differences meant less than their shared longings.

Through a soft unsteady mist made of synthol and Saki’s bleach-blonde hair, he tried again to work out how he was going to say goodbye to his parents. He definitely couldn’t go back to Renraku, and they'd be in danger if he didn’t absolutely cut ties and burn his SIN. They had given him a lot, but taken even more…they’d have to see, it was time for him to stand on his own. In the shadowed, bloodied world of the streets, unrestrained, where there were chummers to hold and lives to be saved. There would be loss and hardship–they might all be dead in a month–but if he could only spend it fighting and saving with all the strength in him, he knew he’d be happier than Renraku had ever made him or his dad.

He'd never felt any real desire to take revenge on Renraku and the corps, as Saki did, or even hunt down the human boys who'd once driven him to suicide. Maybe that was cowardice. Or maybe just knowing he had strength, he had chummers, he wasn't a worthless freak, was more than enough. 

Saki had led him down to the garage under the block–squalid and mildewed as the condemned apartment squatting over it–and to a battered and slightly charred Hyundai sports car missing one wheel and a full tenth of the engine. She told him how she worked for years to fix it up–planned more than fixed, without nyuyen for parts. Maybe she’d race it away with him from a novahot Run on the Renraku archology, one day, or just drive and drive all the way down to Los Angeles. On the back seat beside her, Yuu happily watched more than he listened to her talk on about her future and his.

"My street name's going to be Tora, _tiger_ , when I feel like I'm ready for it. You're _Hunter_ already, I guess?"

Yuu didn't feel so good now about a name he'd gotten for punching out any slummer he'd met. But he already knew a name, a rep, wasn't something wisely thrown away. He would remember his past, and hunt the evil without mercy in the future. 

"So, hey..." Saki tapped her short nails, cast her eyes away, looked casual as she could manage with a raging blush, "...doesn't the hunter catch the tiger, in the end?" 

Yuu stammered something or other. In the end, Saki signed and rolled her top up, pulling his hand down to where she was warm and very ready.

Yuu wanted very much to kiss round her breasts, and she laughed as he did. He wanted more, and slim legs rubbed a band of fire round his waist. He felt the pain in her voice when he was too hard and fast with his fingers, and hated himself, but she put a guiding hand on his, again, and kissed him deeply, again. Tickling through the roof of his mouth, to empty his brain of everything but wanting her. The power girls had was really something monstrous. Monsters together; he had a monster's strength to love her with too.

There was too much new and bewildering for him to take in. Fumbling the rubber onto his shudderingly eager hard on, in the car’s elbow-filled confines, certainly wasn’t like a dating sim. Nor was feeling Saki squirm against his chest and urge him on, for a sadly brief space of time, or staring into her eyes across a few inches, from the gasping gift that _she_ , his unconquerable girl from the Shadows, had given him.

“Saki. I’m not going to leave you. I’ll fight for you, protect you from anything, oh, Saki, Saki…”

“Yeah, I love you too. Only, I ought to tell you now…Pip and Yoshi sort of told me to make nice with you. Make dead certain the novahot newbie didn’t run back to his parents.”

“Oh…”

“I told those drekheads to get fragged. I wanted you for _me_ , studmuffin, I really think I love you, just a bit...” Her red, clipped nails scratched down Yuu’s chest, “...but you’ve got to get that mush out your head, _really_ understand this ain’t a game. People do anything, even for a chance to survive, drek isn’t ever what it seems…there’s no going back.”

“Never was. I never got that. Just charged in. Saki, all I’ve ever been good at is hurting people, and I’m going to build my life on that. I’ve done some crazy things…Saki, can you hold me back, call me a drekhead, if I go Hunter-crazy again? I don’t want to put you or the others in danger–I really do want to stay with you, alive.”

“Hmm, more like I’d be charging right beside you. I’m not the scabbard to your sword, some precious heart-power-hero’s-girlfriend, just because I’m your girl. But, yeah, I don’t want either of us to die…I guess we’ve both got lots to learn. Masato should have a lesson or two, when he finds out about us...if you make it out alive, I'll teach you too.”

“That sounds novahot, Saki. Not just this...I mean, I...that sounds like a home. Renraku never gave me one, or maybe took it away...but we'll make it, or we'll find it together, all I fragging know..."

Yuu held fast to Saki's hand. Unspoken words sank down from his lips to their hearts. Staying together on the streets would take fighting, and faith. But they would not let go until security embraced love and they had their holyland. 

“Frag, what did I say about mush?” Saki propped herself up against a steam-covered window, drew Yuu to her again by a part that did not stay mushy for long, “Yeah, come to _oneesan_. You’ve only got the rest of the night to get me off, you brooding, rock-hard, stupid, sexy shadowrunner…”

Yuu felt like he'd never smiled before in his life. Between a shadowrun and a struggle for life, in the sprawl--with more than three years before Yoshi, Masato and Saki would be dead, while Yuu would curse life as he killed for _the Agency_ \--it was still so very good to be alive. 

Across Seattle, it was past midnight. Revellers, gangers and lost souls passed over the neon-lit pavements; cops and shadowrunners went about their business. Stuffer Shack clerks on the late shift checked their guns under the counter. Hustlers, fighters and chipheads slumped between piles of trash to dream of a better world. Wageslaves slept the dreamless sleep of the tranquilised and overworked, between soft sheets. Lovers loved and greenhorns hoped; the whole Sixth World rolled on together towards their shadowed, bloody future. 


End file.
